But it was chiefly in the prosecution for seditious meetings and seditious writings that the character of the Government showed itself. The best known of these in the year 1793 was that of Muir. This young man, a member of the Society of the Friends of the People, was indicted for spreading the works of Thomas Paine. He defended himself with great ability upon the ground that he had only aimed at the reform of Parliament. His speech was greeted with loud applause, but the Lord Justice-Clerk summed up most strongly against him, and asserted the strange doctrine that the Government was made up of the landed interest. "As for the rabble," said he, "who have nothing but personal property, what hold has the nation on them?" He sentenced Muir to fourteen years' transportation. The severity of the judges and the frequent trials that the Government ordered had not the effect of checking the popular feeling. Delegates from various parts of Scotland, in concert with the Friends of the People and other societies, assembled at Edinburgh. The leading spirits were Maurice Margarot and Joseph Gerald, agents from London. These delegates assumed the name of a convention, spoke of the first year of the British Republic, and otherwise mimicked their French brethren. In December the law came upon them, and three of them, with Margarot and Gerald, were transported for fourteen years.

Up till this time the people as a whole had been heartily with Pitt; but the course of the year had tended to change their feelings, the war had been by no means the light undertaking expected, and it began to be seen that its continuation meant fearful expenses, heavy taxes, and a system of government but little in accordance with the general character of English administration. Some even of Pitt's old friends began to whisper of peace, but his will was not one to yield to opposition. In Parliament he was still supreme, and in this first beginning of difficulties he exhibited the greatness of his energy and his resources. He branded with fierce words, which reminded his hearers of his great father, all who dared to think of peace; he openly avowed that the idea was impossible till some total change took place in the French Government, thus putting his actions on their true basis. Backed by his commercial friends, he found means to continue the subsidies to Prussia and Austria, he purchased the adhesion of several of the smaller German states, induced the Spaniards to continue a war which was wholly against their own interests, and obliged the lesser Italian states to join the coalition; he even allowed Russia to perpetrate the second partition of Poland as a price of her neutrality. With such efforts as these he contrived to carry on his war; it was not unreasonably that he became the ogre of the French, the one object of their insatiable hatred.

At home he would not abate one jot of his policy. Again the prosecutions went forward. So little had the late action of Government been successful that discontent and the intrigues of the societies were becoming even more envenomed. The English had taken a leaf out of the Scotch book; two of the great societies—the Constitutional Society and the Corresponding Society—determined that they too would have a convention. It seems to have been a far more real and dangerous thing than the Scotch convention. The workmen were stirred up, meetings were held in all the great towns attended by delegates from London, revolutionary songs were composed and circulated, and a considerable number of weapons constructed and secreted. It was the intention of the Convention to overawe Parliament somewhat in the same way as the Jacobin Club overawed the French Assembly. The Government determined to act as strongly as possible against it, and instead of accusing the leaders of seditious practices merely, they thought it advisable to treat their conduct as a great and capital crime, and to bring them to trial for high treason. The leaders arrested were Hardy, Secretary of the Corresponding Society, Adams, Secretary of the Constitutional Society, Horne Tooke, the well-known opponent of Junius, the Rev. Jeremiah Joyce, author of the "Scientific Dialogues," and tutor to Lord Stanhope's sons, Thelwall, a political lecturer of some importance, and three others. A secret committee of the House, having examined their books and papers, reported that there were ample proofs of a traitorous conspiracy for overawing Parliament. Upon this report the Government advanced a step further, and in spite of the eager opposition of the minority, carried through the House the suspension of the Habeas Corpus. Trials for high treason followed both in England and Scotland. In Scotland the prosecution was successful, but the English trials did not go off so smoothly. Hardy was tried first on the 28th of October. Sir John Scott (afterwards Lord Eldon) conducted the prosecution; but although the evidence, if true, tended to show that language of a most seditious character had been used, and weapons and plans of insurrection made, yet the skill and eloquence of Erskine, who laid his chief stress on the grave constitutional danger of any enlargement of the Treason Act, procured an acquittal. The Government was not satisfied, Horne Tooke was also tried. He defended himself with his usual effrontery and humour, and again an acquittal was obtained. Still the Crown persisted, and Thelwall the lecturer was tried; again the accused was acquitted. The excitement about the trials was intense, the speeches of the rival barristers were listened to with extreme interest, and the acquittals were hailed with the wildest enthusiasm. It was plain that a considerable change had taken place in the feelings of the people; the strings of repression had been drawn too tight; the line between class and class was becoming more sharply marked.

The same fact is rendered obvious by the completion in this year of the consolidation of the new Tory party. Ever since the middle of 1792 the Duke of Portland and his friends had voted with Government, but they now openly joined it, and were admitted to some of the best places. The Duke of Portland became Secretary for the Home Department, Earl Fitzwilliam Lord President, and Mr. Wyndham Secretary at War. The one point which connected the new recruits with the ministry was the determination all felt to carry on the war. Pitt was therefore hampered in two directions. When Parliament was opened on the 13th of December 1794, there appeared to be a growing feeling in Desire for peace. favour of peace, and Pitt found himself opposed to many of his old friends, the country gentlemen; but his union with the Duke of Portland and his party rendered a change of policy at present impossible. He was in the hands of the war party; afraid of losing their support, and buoyed up by an idle belief in the financial exhaustion of France, he determined still to carry on the war vigorously. As he was quite paramount in Parliament[12] in spite of an increased minority, he had no difficulty in getting leave to raise a loan of eighteen millions, and to guarantee another large loan to purchase the co-operation of Austria. He nevertheless slightly changed his tone, and confessed that he should be satisfied with a peace that gave him security, and allowed later in the session that there was a possibility of treating with the present Government of France.

Amongst other minor difficulties which he had to meet was the constant embarrassment of the Prince of Wales. Seven years before he had purchased the payment of his debts by a lie concerning his wife; he was now again £700,000 in debt; the only terms on which he could hope to get relieved were that he should marry legally, and the King had chosen for him a Princess of Brunswick whom he had never seen. Lord Malmesbury arranged the negotiation, but unwisely suppressed, what he saw clearly himself, the absolute unfitness of the lady for the position she was to occupy. He found her frivolous, slovenly, and quite deficient in tact. It was impossible but that she should be distasteful to any English gentleman. Very shortly after the birth of her child a formal separation took place, and a scandalous dispute arose, which afterwards turned into a great party conflict. For the present however, the Prince received the price of his unfortunate bargain. The royal message demanding the assistance of Parliament was couched in humble language, and asked only for some arrangement by which the debts should be ultimately paid; but even thus it excited a perfect storm in the House. None even of the Prince's old friends rose to defend him, and Pitt himself, though no friend of the Prince, intreated that the matter might not be examined by a Parliamentary Committee, for fear of the damaging effect of such an inquiry on the principle of an hereditary monarchy. It was finally arranged that the Prince's income should be raised from £72,000 to £125,000 a year, that the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall should be set apart, which in twenty-seven years would extinguish the debt, and that £25,000 a year more should be devoted to pay the interest. To these enactments was added an extraordinary one, rendering the Prince's servants liable for any contract they should enter into on his behalf, and limiting legal remedy against the Prince to the term of three months.

Such demands upon the public purse seemed very badly timed, when the working classes were suffering very heavily from depression of trade, from famine produced by two bad harvests, and from a constantly increasing burden of taxation. Discontent was in fact increasing widely, great political meetings were held in London and elsewhere to expose the abuses of monarchy and aristocracy. Riots and seditious writings were constantly on the increase, and the Government thought the state of affairs so critical that they determined upon an autumn session. Three days before Parliament met a monster meeting was held under the auspices of the Corresponding Society in Copenhagen Fields. The excitement thus produced found vent in an assault upon the Assault on the King. King as he went to open Parliament, one of the windows of his state coach was broken by a stone or bullet; on his return his coach was again surrounded by an angry mob, with shouts of "Bread, bread! peace, peace!" and he only escaped with difficulty by driving rapidly in his private carriage from St. James's to Buckingham Palace. The King, who throughout showed great courage, showed himself in the evening at Covent Garden theatre, where he was on the whole well received. This act of violence produced two coercive Bills, one to suppress seditious meetings, the other to extend the law of treason. Every public meeting was to be advertised by a paper signed by resident householders, and all meetings were liable to be dispersed according to the Riot Act if any two justices thought them dangerous; while by the second law, writing, preaching, and speaking, were created overt acts, thus rendering the offender guilty of treason, and writing or speaking against the established Government was made a highly punishable crime. These Bills were commonly known as the Sedition and Treason Bills. They were not passed without strong opposition, and the use of language on the part of Fox so vehement as to excite still further the anger of the Tories. This party was now enjoying its selfish triumph to the utmost. It became necessary again to augment the taxes, and Pitt hit upon the expedient of levying duties upon legacies and successions. The country gentlemen had sufficient influence to confine the Bill to the succession of money and personal property only, and to exclude real property from the action of the Bill. This glaring injustice was not remedied till 1853.

The burden of taxation had much to do with the overtures for peace which were set on foot in 1796. Nearly all classes in the kingdom had become weary of the war. Pitt, as has been seen, had been forced into it against his natural tendencies, and though, when once embarked in the war of opinion, he had used language of the most overbearing character, he was eager, now that he found his hope of a speedy bankruptcy of France frustrated, to bring about an honourable peace. Such an opportunity was offered by the changed character of the French Government. The Directory had held its position for upwards of a year, and seemed to give promise of such stability as would render negotiation possible. This change in the Government of France had been the outcome of a series of revolutions which had followed each other in rapid succession.

The Girondins had, contrary to their conscientious opinions, voted for the death of the King. It was in fact an act of suicide. After this it was useless to oppose any demand of the Jacobins; the attempt only produced a violent struggle in the Convention, which ended in the complete overthrow of the Girondins by the insurrection of the 1st of June. In the place of the party thus annihilated the Jacobins found themselves supreme. Upon them henceforward lay the duty of saving the Revolution within and rescuing France from foreign assaults from without. The machinery of Government to which they trusted to obtain these ends was a Committee of Public Safety, in whose hands the full powers of the executive were lodged. As far as the external defence of France was concerned, the restless energy of the new rulers was completely The Committee of Public Safety. successful. La Vendée, Toulon, and Lyons, the centres of opposition within France, were all reduced. Carnot struck out a new plan of warfare, and found means to employ with success the masses with which an almost unlimited conscription supplied the army, and from this time onwards the French were everywhere successful. But while exhibiting this energy abroad, in France the government of the Committee was in the last degree cruel and tyrannical. Nor could the Jacobins agree among themselves. On the one side was a party atheistical in their religion, communistic in their political views, foul and blasphemous in their language. This party, which predominated in the Commune, took its name from Hébert, the editor of an infamous paper called Père Duchesne. It shocked the feelings of the world by its excesses, abolishing religion, closing the churches, and holding a blasphemous service in Notre Dame in honour of Reason. On the other side was a party, headed by Danton, intent chiefly on success abroad, and inclined to believe that the work of destruction had gone far enough. Between the two was the party of the Purists, headed by Robespierre and St. Just, who looked with equal hatred on the scandalous and anarchical conduct of the Hébertists and the indulgent and somewhat loose lives of the followers of Danton. Robespierre was able to attack and destroy both these parties in turn. The Hébertists were the first to fall, but very shortly after the same fate befell the Dantonists.

Atheists and indulgents being thus both removed, Robespierre and his party were virtually masters of France. Under them the Terror knew no relaxation. "The maxim of our policy," said Robespierre, "ought to be to guide the people by reason and the enemies of the people by terror." Whole batches of victims completely unknown to each other were sent off together to the guillotine under pretext of being accomplices in conspiracy. Between the 20th of June and the 27th of July 1400 people were executed. But Robespierre and his friends looked forward to some conclusion of this state of things, desiring to establish a purely moral, stoical, and deistical Republic. As a first step, the worship of the Supreme Being was decreed, and a great festivity held, where Robespierre, decked with flowers, officiated as priest. Thus, too, he began to shelter the priests and nobles. The idea of the cessation of the Revolution thoroughly frightened some of the worst among the Committee, and Robespierre's assumption of authority disgusted them. They contrived to form a coalition with all the discontented parties, Hébertists, Dantonists, Girondists, Royalists, were all ready to combine against the one man whose stoical purity seemed to insult them, and whose cold implacable cruelty gave them no hope if they should offend him. Robespierre was thus hated by the people, and at enmity both with the people and the Committee, but was still influential at the club of the Jacobins, the Convention, and the revolutionary Tribunal. Knowing that an assault would be directed against him, his wisdom would have been to strike first. To this course St. Just urged him, but he seems to have relied upon his influence in the Convention, and was astonished when he found his friends wholly outnumbered and a hearing refused him. On the 27th of July he was arrested Fall of Robespierre. with Couthon, St. Just, and his brother. He escaped and fled to the Commune. For a moment it appeared as if an insurrection would have reinstated him. But the richer sections of Paris rallied to the destruction of their tyrant, and on the following day Robespierre, with twenty members of the Commune, was dragged to the scaffold.

The party which had overthrown Robespierre were as cruel and far more depraved than he was. They would gladly have continued the Revolution in its most odious form. But the Terror once destroyed, it was impossible to check a reactionary movement. The revolutionary Committee and Tribunal were modified, the Commune destroyed, the club of the Jacobins dissolved, and the Girondins who had escaped execution recalled. Such measures did not please the mob of Paris, still further excited by the constant continuance of famine. On the 12th Germinal (April 1), and again on the 1st Prairial (May 20), they rose in insurrection, invaded the hall of the Convention, clamouring for bread and the constitution of 1793. For Establishment of the Directory. Oct. 1795. six hours a wild tumult raged within the walls. But soldiers had been collected, and with the aid of the troops of the more reactionary Paris sections order was restored. This was the deathblow of the democratic party. A new constitution was drawn up, the executive power was vested in five directors, and two councils, the one of 500, the other of 250, established. The hopes of the royalists had been raised by the late reactionary movement. Finding themselves thwarted by the new constitution, the richer sections and the partisans of reaction marched on the Tuileries. General Menou proved unequal to his place, and the task of defending the Assembly was given to Barras, who chose as his active lieutenant Bonaparte. With a vigour unchecked by fear of shedding the blood of citizens, this young officer brought up thirty cannon from the camp of Sablons, and received the advancing insurrectionists with such showers of grape, that, though not without a short resistance, they were completely defeated. This was the first step towards military despotism. The new constitution came into effect on the 27th of October 1795.

Thus, before it was understood how completely the army had got the upper hand in France, how completely from henceforward its interests would be military, the appearance of something more like a permanent and orderly government in the shape of the Directory seemed for the instant to give hopes of peace. Towards that point Pitt's feelings had been gradually tending. Even as early as December 1795 he had spoken of the possibility of an honourable peace should a more settled government ever be arrived at in France, and since then much had happened to induce him to lower his tone. In spite of all his efforts, he had seen his great coalition disappear at the Congress at Basle. He had seen the complete ruin of his Quiberon expedition. More than that, all his best tendencies had been shocked by the consequences of his own government at home. But the opening of his eyes to the fallacy of his belief in the speedy bankruptcy of France and its rapid conquest, with which in all his difficulties he had hitherto buoyed himself up, came too late. His application for peace through the Swiss minister (March 1796), which the King announced at the close of the session, met with a very cold reception. For the Government of France, having just been re-established on a new and more dangerous basis, would listen to no terms which implied the restoration of the Low Countries to Austria; and as it was impossible for Pitt, after his conduct to that country, to suggest any other terms, the negotiations speedily came to nothing.

Indeed, the French Republic had this year reached a pitch of glory unequalled in the palmiest times of the monarchy. Carnot, who was again in power as one of the Directory, had conceived a plan for a campaign of this year upon a gigantic scale. Three armies were to push out from France and strike all of them by the three different roads, of the Maine, the Danube, and the Po, at Vienna. Three young generals were intrusted with the task. Jourdan was given the army of the Sambre and Meuse, Moreau the army of the Rhine and Moselle, Bonaparte succeeded Schérer in the command of the army of Italy. The preceding year the battle of Loano had secured to the French the Riviera as far as Savona, but the troops Napoleon's Italian campaign. 1796. were destitute of every necessary. Napoleon aroused their enthusiasm by promises, and in a fortnight had separated the Austrians and Piedmontese, defeated the former at Montenotte and Dégo, and thrown them back into Lombardy, the latter at Millesimo, and again at Mondovi, as he pursued them towards Turin, and finally wrung from them a treaty which left him at liberty to pursue the Austrians. Another fortnight was hardly over before he had turned the Austrian position on the Ticino by the passage of the Po at Placenza, driven them from the Adda by the victories of Fombio and Lodi, and having chased them behind the Mincio, secured the whole of Lombardy to the French. Bonaparte completed the first act of the campaign by securing the line of the Adige and forming the siege of Mantua. He employed some weeks in conquering Italy as far south as Naples, but from this work he was recalled by the approach of an Austrian army to raise the siege of Mantua. Wurmser came down the Adige on one side of the Lake of Garda, Quasdanowich down the Chiesa on the other. Bonaparte, giving up every other object for the moment, placed himself between the armies, defeated Quasdanowich, at Lonato on the one hand, and Wurmser at Castiglioni on the other, and thus driving them into the Tyrol, resumed the siege of Mantua. Wurmser made one more effort to raise the siege; again he advanced with two armies, hoping to enclose the French. Davidowich descended the Adige, Wurmser the valley of the Brenta. The battle of Roveredo destroyed the former, while Bonaparte, turning rapidly into the valley of the Brenta in pursuit of Wurmser, came up with and defeated him at Bassano. Thus cut off from Germany, the Austrian general had no resource but to take refuge in Mantua (Sept. 12). The Austrians could not leave their army thus shut up in Mantua, and a fresh effort was made to save it. It was again a double attack, but after three days' fight, Alvinzi, coming from the east, was beaten at Arcola, and the attempt failed. Six weeks later he made one more desperate effort, but was defeated again on the plateau of Rivoli. Alvinzi's attack had been rendered the more dangerous, because upon the Maine and Rhine Jourdan and Moreau had been unsuccessful. There the Archduke Charles had in a certain degree followed the same plans as Bonaparte, and directing his whole force against Jourdan, had compelled the retreat of Moreau also. It was to this victorious general that the Austrians looked to continue their defence. But Bonaparte, in the beginning of the following year, repeatedly drove him backwards, defeated him on the Tagliamento, drove him into the mountains, and defeated him at Neumarck, and finally, having secured the pass of the Semmering, and being within eighty miles of Vienna, he obliged the Archduke to demand a suspension of arms, and opened negotiations known as the Preliminaries of Léoben (April 13), which were completed under the title of Campo Formio on the 17th of October 1797.

On the Rhine and the Maine the two other divisions of the general plan had not met with the same success as had attended the arms of Bonaparte. Great and astonishing as his progress had been, it did not therefore seem as yet to have closed all hope of peace, for which in fact it had only rendered Pitt more anxious; and as the establishment of the Directory seemed to promise that permanence to the Government which Pitt had declared to be the indispensable condition of any hopeful negotiations, it was determined in the autumn of this year (1796) to make a fresh effort, this time direct, to negotiate with the Directory. For this purpose Lord Malmesbury was despatched to Paris. The English believed that they had something they could offer in exchange for any restorations France might make. The Cape of Good Hope had been captured in the preceding year, and in the spring of the present year Moore and Abercrombie had done good service in the West Indies. Many of the islands there had been taken, Guadaloupe almost alone remained in French hands. These conquests they offered to restore. But if the French had been unwilling to treat in the preceding year, their successes in Italy had not rendered them more moderate; they were at this very time arranging, at the instigation of the malcontents in Ireland, represented by Wolfe Tone, a plan for the conquest of Ireland under the command of General Hoche, and probably a still greater plan for the invasion of England itself. In fact, there was still the same irremediable objection—the English still felt bound in honour not to resign the Netherlands to France. "On this point," writes Grenville in his instructions to Malmesbury, "your Lordship must not give the smallest hope that his Majesty will be induced to relax." There was also another point in the French diplomacy which rendered the negotiations difficult. They could not understand the position of a plenipotentiary who had not absolutely full powers to act without reference to his own Court, and taking umbrage at the repeated couriers who went to and fro from Paris, declared their belief that the effort at peace was not honest on the part of England, and that Malmesbury had not full powers at all; and finally, De la Croix, a somewhat stiff man of the red tape school, who had from the first behaved with considerable rudeness, wrote suddenly to Malmesbury bidding him leave Paris within eighteen hours. Thus closed the second effort on the part of Pitt to make peace, chiefly important because it clears him from the charge of inveterate determination to continue the war, because it throws the blame of that continuance completely on the French, and because it shows the effect which the lengthened efforts of England, especially the pressure on the finances, were having upon the naturally peaceful and economical mind of the minister.

The preparations for invasion from abroad could not be kept secret, and fresh and constant efforts had been made to meet them. Fresh levies were made both for the navy and for the army; supplementary bodies of militia were raised; plans suggested for the establishment of large bodies of irregular cavalry, and the enrolment as irregular infantry of all those who paid a gun license. More than this, in spite of the pressure on the finances, under which the funds had fallen as low as £53, a new loan of £18,000,000 was raised upon terms which, though we should now think very high, were not then considered remunerative. The loan, which bore a nominal interest of 5 per cent., was issued at £112, 10s.; that is, every £112, 10s. advanced was to represent £100, thus practically reducing the interest to less than 4½ per cent. Pitt found it necessary to make a distinct appeal to the loyalty of the people to raise the loan on these terms; but the temper of the wealthy classes and the amount of riches still existing in England were shown by the extraordinary rapidity with which the subscription list was filled. £1,000,000 was subscribed by the Bank in their corporate capacity, £400,000 by the directors individually; before the close of the first day £5,000,000 was subscribed by different merchants. At ten o'clock on the Monday the doors were opened, and by twenty minutes past eleven the subscription was declared to be full; hundreds were reluctantly obliged to go away. By the post innumerable orders came from the country, scarcely one of which could be accepted, and long after the subscription was closed persons continued coming, and were obliged to depart disappointed.[13] The Duke of Bridgewater sent a draft on sight of £100,000, a similar sum was even given by the Duke of Bedford, one of the staunchest opponents of the war. The Ministry subscribed £10,000 a piece.

Such an outburst of loyalty might have opened the eyes of the French as to the difference between the revolutionary temper of England and of their own country, but their ignorance of the temper both of England and Ireland was extreme; General Clark (subsequently Napoleon's War Minister) was at this very time asking Wolfe Tone whether he thought it probable that in case of a landing in Ireland the Irish Lord Chancellor would join the rebels. On the 15th of December the great expedition for Ireland set sail from Brest. Like so many invasions of England, it was thwarted by the uncertainties of the sea. After a stormy passage a few ships assembled in Bantry Bay; but the general had been driven in another direction; there were no signs of the eager Jacobin uprising which the French had expected, the commanders were afraid to proceed without orders from Hoche, and the expedition straggled back again to Brest, with the loss of four line of battle-ships and eight frigates. A similar untimely fate met a more desperate assault intended for the shores of England. Some 1500 men, two-thirds of whom were liberated galley-slaves, and from their character known as the "Légion noire," were sent under Colonel Tate with the intention of burning Bristol. They landed on the shores of Pembrokeshire, and it needed but the appearance of a few militia and yeomanry under Lord Cawdor (and it is frequently said of a few old Welsh women in their red cloaks and hats) to induce the crew of miscreants to take to flight. The expedition was probably only intended as a sort of forlorn hope to discover in what state of preparation England was, for the negotiations having entirely ceased, the French were thinking of a great attack on England itself.

The idea of invasion was a well-timed one; at no time in the war, either before or after, was England in so critical a condition or its existence so precarious. It had become plain by this time that the strength of England, at all events under the present management, lay in two directions—in its enormous resources and capacity for paying money, and in its fleet. Though such troops as had been employed had exhibited their usual bravery, though when well led, as in India, their efforts had met with great success, it was evident that the present ministry, hampered by their political relations and by the incessant interference of the King himself in the army, was unable to make any real show in the European war. But already in the last four years nearly eighty millions had been added to the National Debt, every variety of taxation almost had been tried both to cover the interest of the accumulating debt and to supply the yearly million to the sinking fund, and men began to think that the sources of money must shortly begin to fail. And yet the subsidized armies abroad had met with nothing but disaster. The North of Germany, including even the King's electorate of Hanover, had been driven to enter into a neutrality. Prussia had in the last year signed two conventions of the most amicable and friendly description with France; and the well-known selfishness of the Austrian Court did not allow it to be questioned that, if it saw its way to permanent advantage, it also would close its disastrous campaign by deserting the coalition. Worse even than that remained behind; it seemed as if the country was really upon the verge of a national bankruptcy, for the amount of specie was found insufficient to carry on the business of the country. At the same time that the financial strength of England seemed to have been fruitlessly exhausted, her permanent power upon the sea seemed on the point of disappearing also; for not only had the French been lately turning their attention to their own navy, but the successes of their arms had given them the command both of the fleets of Holland and Spain. Holland, formed into the Batavian Republic, had early purchased peace by promising thirty ships: in the July of the last year Spain had entered into a similar convention, and the whole of her naval resources, as many as forty line of battle-ships, were at the disposal of the French. It was with these combined armaments that the intended descent upon England was to take place. And just as the internal ruin had gone hand in hand with the failure of external financial influence, so it appeared that the new-born naval power of our enemies would go hand in hand with the total dissolution of our maritime force: for disaffection was widely spread among our sailors, and the year was marked by the mutinies of St. Helen's and the Nore.

In point of time it was the financial difficulty which first arose. The difficulty was not what is called a commercial but a monetary crisis. There was no want of credit, there was no want of solid wealth, but there was every chance of there being such a dearth of the circulating medium that the ordinary transactions of business would not be able to be carried on, that it would be impossible to meet engagements as they fell due, and that consequently many houses would be forced to stop payment, and a general bankruptcy be the result, more especially as it seemed probable that at the head of the banks that stopped payment would be the Bank of England itself. The causes of this state of things are not very difficult to understand. The same forces which had been at work to produce the necessary issue of Exchequer bills in 1793 had continued; the balance of trade had been constantly against the country. The position of Spain, Italy, France and Holland in the ranks of our enemies had of necessity curtailed the number of our purchasers. The necessity of war supplies and several poor harvests had rendered necessary the purchase of much food and of much raw material, consequently to restore the balance large payments in gold and silver had to be made. The great subsidies granted to foreign powers had necessarily been chiefly paid in specie. Large compensation had been given for the freights and cargoes of neutral ships which had been seized; and the Government for their special purposes had had to borrow upwards of ten millions in specie from the Bank. Threats of invasion had induced people throughout the country to realize their property as far as possible; this had produced a run upon the country banks, which had in turn demanded their deposits from the Bank of England. All these accumulated causes had so lowered the reserve, that on Saturday the 20th of February there was only £1,272,000 in the Bank cellars, and it was known that the demands of the next forty-eight hours would entirely empty them. In this crisis the Bank applied to the Suspension of cash payments. Government; a Council was immediately held, although it was Sunday, and a proclamation was issued forbidding payments in cash. A meeting of merchants next day sanctioned this step, promising to accept bank notes as legal tender. On examination the Bank was found solvent, but a Bill was passed prohibiting it to pay in cash more than twenty shillings, or to advance to Government more than £600,000. Though only intended as a temporary expedient, this Act continued in operation for twenty-two years, and during the whole of that time the depreciation of the paper money was comparatively slight.

The danger caused by the mutiny was still greater: it was the intention of the French Directory that the fleet of the Texel, composed entirely of the Dutch, the fleet at Brest which had been collected for the invasion of Ireland, and the great Spanish fleet, should combine. Thus, an armament of more than seventy ships of the line would sweep the English fleet from the Channel, and any operations against The threatened invasion checked by the victory of St. Vincent. the island would be rendered safe. But the check sustained by the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent ruined the well-conceived plan. A few days before Tate landed in England, the great Spanish fleet set sail from Carthagena, intending to join the French fleet off Brest and the Dutch fleet off the Texel, and thus secure the mastery of the Channel. Sir John Jervis was Admiral in the Mediterranean, and with him was Commodore Nelson, and though the Spanish fleet had twelve more ships than he had, and 1200 more guns, he determined to fight. He contrived to separate nine Spanish ships from the main body, and took four of the remainder, and though the separated ships joined the line in the evening, and Jervis was still outnumbered, the Spanish fleet retired into Cadiz.

But though the combined invasion was thus thwarted, the whole danger for England, or rather for Ireland, was by no means at an end. Hoche had been removed from the army of the Ocean to the army of the Sambre and Meuse. His mind was constantly bent upon the invasion of Ireland, and, acting under his influence, the Dutch Government, wishing to do something to show that they were not entirely effaced from the list of nations, with great efforts strengthened and equipped their fleet at the Texel till it numbered fourteen sail of the line, and embarked in it their whole army, 15,000 men, for an attack upon Ireland. The Directory, taking umbrage at this independent action, insisted upon Hoche, with 5000 men, accompanying them, and on their refusal began again to get ready their Brest squadron for a similar expedition. To watch the Dutch became the duty of Admiral Duncan, the care of Brest was intrusted to Admiral Bridport with the fleet at Portsmouth. Fortunately for England, the sailing of the fleets was delayed; had they sailed in the summer, as intended, they would have found England without fleets.

Early in the year a conspiracy was discovered among the crews of the fleet at Spithead, with a view to demanding redress of certain grievances. These grievances were shared in by all the seamen in the navy and were very real. The pay and pensions had never been altered since the time of Charles II., though every necessary of life had risen from thirty to forty per cent.; this neglect was rendered particularly objectionable as the pay and pensions of the army had been increased to suit the times. Many officers were appointed by interest alone, and a system of barefaced peculation was carried on by those who had the duty of provisioning the fleet, for the ships were furnished in a great degree by contract through the purser; moreover, all the nautical arrangements were at this time remarkable for extreme roughness, almost brutality, for unjust severity of discipline, for arbitrary power vested in the hands of the captain, and frequent misuse of that power. When Lord Bridport, Lord Howe's second in command, signalled to put to sea, every ship in the fleet refused to obey; and the next day delegates from every ship met in the 'Queen Charlotte,' and the mutiny was organized. The men behaved with perfect decorum, and drew up a petition, asking that their wages should be raised to suit the rise of prices in every direction, and that some improvement should be made in their system of pensions. To the Admiralty they sent a petition, exposing the peculations of the pursers and the unwarrantable hardships to which the sailor was exposed. The Admiralty acknowledged at once the justice of the claim for advanced wages, but were silent upon the other abuses. This did not satisfy the men: three admirals were sent to treat with them; and when an outburst of anger on the part of one of them broke off the conference, the red flag of mutiny was hoisted and the guns loaded. However, when their demands were granted in full, and a free pardon was sent them from London, they at once returned to their duty. During the whole of the outbreak perfect order had reigned. But the folly of the Admiralty, who, wishing to save their credit, sent down a perverse order that the marines should be kept constantly ready to suppress mutiny, led the sailors to believe that they were being deceived, and a second outbreak was the result. An attempt to suppress it by force on board the 'London' ended in a real mutiny among all the ships then lying at St. Helen's, outside Spithead. Lord Howe, the most popular of the admirals, known among the sailors as "Black Dick," was intrusted with the difficult task of recalling the fleet to its allegiance. With great skill he contrived that while their requests were granted, they should seem to be receiving rather than demanding a favour. He persuaded them to write a letter of contrition to himself, and apparently as the fruit of his good offices, announced to them that an Act of Parliament had been passed securing to them the redress of grievances they had demanded, and that considerable changes were to be made among the officers.

This wholly unpolitical mutiny was followed by a more formidable movement among the ships at the Nore. It began on board the 'Sandwich,' the flagship of Admiral Buckner. As in the former case, delegates from the seamen met on board the 'Sandwich,' but the chief management of the mutiny fell absolutely into the hands of a seaman called Parker, a man of good education, and at one time an officer in the navy, but whose abilities as a leader were spoiled by his arrogant assumption of dictatorial power. Under his influence the demands of the mutineers assumed a political character; they required a revision of the Articles of War, an increase of prize-money, and the dismissal of officers not agreeable to the ships' companies. All efforts to bring the men to reason were unavailing. Lord Spencer himself, the First Lord of the Admiralty, had an interview with Parker, but was met with nothing but insult. After this the mutineers fired upon some frigates who would not join them, and blockaded the Thames. It became necessary to take vigorous measures. Bills were passed without opposition strengthening the hands of Government, and making it felony to hold intercourse with the mutinous ships. Ships were got ready, the navigation of the Thames was rendered difficult by the removal of marks, and batteries were erected along the river. Cut off from the shore, and finding no sympathy among the fleets at Portsmouth and Plymouth, nor among even the most advanced radicals on shore, although they were joined by the fleets of Admiral Duncan, the mutineers began to give way. Ship after ship slipped her cable and escaped from the mutinous fleet, and on the 15th of June the 'Sandwich' herself was brought within range of the batteries. Parker was at once apprehended, sentenced to death, and hanged. But though the firmness of the Government had secured them complete victory, they were too conscious of the real abuses in the navy to be severe. Only four or five executions followed.

The great peculiarity of the mutiny was the ease with which it was ultimately suppressed and the proofs of underlying loyalty which are visible throughout it. In the Channel fleet all the offers of the Admiralty, and even of Parliament, were regarded as delusive till the King's own sign manual was exhibited, upon which all signs of mistrust at once vanished. When one of the ships threatened to leave the fleet and join the French, the guns of the rest of the mutinous fleet were at once turned upon it, and it was carefully blockaded by guard-boats; and again, so far from sympathizing with the mutineers of the Nore, the sailors of the Channel fleet, after their return to allegiance, wrote to the delegates declaring that their conduct was a scandal to the British navy. Even at the Nore, where the mutiny had taken a more political form, every ship but one struck the red flag and hoisted the royal ensign on the King's birthday, and within a few weeks of the suppression of the disaffection, the battle of Camperdown, one of the severest engagements of the time, was chiefly won for England by the crews of the lately insurgent fleet.

It was well for England that the Government of France was at this time so disorganized that no vigorous effort could be made to take advantage of her deplorable condition. The place of the assignats had been taken by another form of paper money called "mandats," but these too had been rejected by the people, who could no longer be brought to believe in paper money of any description. Forced to have recourse to the use of specie, the Directory had also found itself compelled to have recourse to the old means of raising money; compulsory loans were established, the receipts of future years anticipated, the national goods sold for whatever they would fetch, and money raised at the most ridiculous interest. These financial arrangements gave rise to much nefarious speculation and stock-jobbing; the business of the army to still more; and the newly enriched speculators, emancipated from the pressure of the terror and devoid of all the nobler sentiments of republicanism, were a mere set of selfish voluptuaries. In such a dissolution of morality and public spirit it was plain that the royalists had their chance, and in the year 1797 sufficient members of their party were elected to change the majority of the two councils. The representative body immediately entered into a struggle with the executive Directory; and in that Directory were Barras, a revolutionary at heart though the leader of all the dissoluteness of the time, Barthélemy, the negotiator of Basle, who appears to have been royalist in his tendencies, and Carnot, an upright republican, but yet under the influence of the dread of the old terror. It was plain that if the Revolution was to be saved it must be done by violent means, and Rewbell and Laréveilière, the remaining directors, with the assistance of Barras, determined to save it at the cost of a coup d'état carried out by the army. On the night of the 18th Fructidor (Sept. 4, 1797), Carnot and Barthélemy, with fifty of the obnoxious majority, were arrested, and all chance of a royalist reaction was for the time over. Bonaparte was now convinced that the ultimate fate of France must be with the army, in other words, that it must lie with himself, but with great wisdom he determined to wait the turn of events.